This week, ending in December 01 2016:
Today's thread is for open discussion of:
History in the academy
Historiographical disputes, debates and rivalries
Implications of historical theory both abstractly and in application
Philosophy of history
And so on
Regular participants in the Thursday threads should just keep doing what they've been doing; newcomers should take notice that this thread is meant for open discussion only of matters like those above, not just anything you like -- we'll have a thread on Friday for that, as usual.
I feel like Bellesiles Arming America fiasco definitely deserves to be up here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America. Is this relevant for the topic? It's certainly gets into the theoretical question of whether or not one should be a scholar activist!
Edit: I'll explain more, I'm on a bus.
Edit 2: Basically what Bellesiles, a really prominent scholar on the topic of early America, did was write a work on gun laws using a lot of fraud evidence. He was making the argument that the framers of the constitution didn't really understand "right to bear arms" in the way that we do today, in support of stricter gun laws, or against the NRA and their gun agenda. His book received lots of prestigious book awards and such, but eventually a amateur historian started to point out a bunch of flaws in his argumentation and evidence. Shit hit the fan. He lost his job, etc. and his name was discredited. But this gets to an even larger questions of how we accept secondary literature, the role of amateur historians, and the job of other historians to check the work and data of one another!
Edit 3: Good sources on this scandal: Melissa Seckora "Disarming America"; Roth "Guns, Gun Culture, Homicide" (written before Bellesiles's book known as plagiarized); Ira D. Gruber's "Of Arms and Men: Arming America and Military History"
Also, I want to point out Elizabeth's Clark's wonderful work, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn. What she does is introduces contemporary theory to one of the groups most afraid to employ it, modern historians. She goes through different prominent theorists, and makes suggestions of how their theories and methods can actually be useful. In the last chapter, she actually applies her method to the study of early Christianity, to "illuminate" the ways in which ancient texts are intertwiened with political and social history (Clark, 169-70).
What do you all think about applying the theories of say, Durkheim, Weber, Foucault, Eliade, McCutcheon, etc.?
Edit: I highly suggest this book for anyone studying history, specifically antiquity.